1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for providing a terminal with content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent years have seen the widespread use of Augmented Reality (AR) technology.
According to the AR technology, when a printed matter having an AR marker thereon is photographed by a terminal such as a tablet computer or a smartphone, content corresponding to the AR marker is displayed in a display unit of the terminal together with an image of the photographed printed matter.
This enables a user to feel as if the actual space were augmented. In other words, this gives the user more realistic feeling than is conventionally possible.
As an example of the AR technology, the following technology has been proposed. A condition storage unit of an AR content server stores each marker added to a product package in association with plural types of content and conditions for providing each of the plural types of content. When a terminal transmits a request for providing content to the AR content server, one of the plural types of content is selected on the basis of the providing conditions stored in the condition storage unit. The AR content server transmits the selected content to the terminal. The terminal superimposes the content received from the AR content server on an image obtained by a camera and displays the superimposed image on a display (English abstract of Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2012-215989).
The following technology has also been proposed. Detailed information associated with an object is set in augmented information (tag). Before the detailed information for the object is displayed, respective display areas of the augmented information (tag) are selected by a user to enable the user to select detailed information needed by him or her (English abstract of Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2013-125328).
According to the conventional technologies, when a marker is sent from a terminal to a server, any of pieces of content corresponding to the marker is provided from the server to the terminal as discussed above.
According to the conventional technologies, however, it is difficult for a user to compare between content pieces because the content pieces cannot be displayed at one time and are displayed only one piece by one piece. It may be possible to reduce the size of content pieces to display the reduced content pieces in a screen. Unfortunately, this leads to reduction in the visibility.